Since immortality may
not be had for the taking, (and what use is it to the living or the
dead?), the poet must make what shift he can to obtain reward in his
own lifetime. It is easy to deceive oneself that words are
beautiful, but they are unruly things. Whatever combinations
we may haply light upon might have been used before, or might be banal
or indifferent. Sometimes a strangeness beyond all
comprehension overwhelms us, sometimes we are elated for unknown
reasons. What I present here did at some time delight me and
I recall it for the pleasure of others, if they be so minded.
If you, the reader, do not like them, then forgive the
intrusion, and I pray only that you return to your old favourites with
renewed fervour and ask yourself what it might have cost the poet to
write them. For words are not cheap or obtained easily,
despite evidence to the contrary, and we, the emissaries, are a
threatened species. In the world's history we have a small
place. And truly the items here add but little to the world's
commodities and might therefore claim the right to be tolerated, or to
inhabit a better palace.

G. R. Ledger.
February 2009.

I

This poem is like the passage of a boat
Along the stream, with gently plashing oars
And swan like feet, and afterwards a silence
And still reverberation.Nothing disturbs

The quietness.In
such a place I could grow old
And die without complaint, watching the leaves move,
The gliding glassy waters, the sun on green,
The russet shape of clouds where no one treads

No human voice to
break the spell, or even
Footsteps upon the gravel to herd the hours
So seldom does the day remain so motionless
So deep the chasm which the sky has entered.

II

Wakeful I listened to the first morning
bird
Defining rooftops and the intractable fields,
Breaking the liquid summits of achievement
Over unbounded plateaus and hills untainted.

That moment then it
seemed stood still forever
Silent as glass, soft as the empty spaces
Between a cloud and cloud in the first dawning
Chill as the waters lying in foreign lands

And moving then far
off away from cities
And sleepers, and away from sounds as if
That fragmentary miracle pieced its images
Into perfection out of sight remote from harbouring minds.

III

Some one of you some you some other one
Or else some other you that lives within
Or you yourself the one I never knew
But loved in images of times having always been

That you I saw
depart and you unnoticing
Guiltless sat by untroubled and I could not catch
That swift elusive spirit as it flew
Passing so easily from touch and following

And let it go so
much of you being mine
Though you were still the same and still unchanging
Beyond the scope of measuring, that strange world
So huge and uninhabitable I could have never hoped to
hold.

IV

This is the first day of the days that
bring
Warmth and abundance from the sun, knowing that genuine
Caress, the elaborate workings of the trees
The smell of ferns toiling in green wildernesses

From damp
and dewy pathways.I could believe
Such lines as these would be to after ages
A diary of the skies that May produces
Still moist with music still anchoring spacious volumes

Of air with birdsong and
disorganised themesOf joy love
laughter yet still reticentWhere bees should
build their shrines and pillage thronesRich with the regal
scent of yellow flowers
smouldering.

V

How fast my
days are fleeting
Like water
on the sand
The
raindrops on the window pane
Leaves
falling to the ground.

Tomorrow
is like yesterday,
I look into your face
To see the shades of autumn there
The lines his pencils trace.

It is my
own reflection
Which dances in the glass,
A beetle crosses the water's edge
A dragonfly hums past.

My loves
are like the autumn days
Mysterious, rich, unknown,
They colour the apples on the tree
And scatter the thistle down.

And why I
lived and why I loved
I ponder frequently.
The grasshopper resonates his song
Scornful of mystery.

Earth
brings to its completion
All that is ever sown,
Indifferent to the artefacts
That we think of as our own.

And
therefore are we severed
From land and sky and sea
Like scattered limbs upon a field
Or birds on a frozen tree.

Our thoughts are for ever
flying
Through
spaces where worlds are thrown;
The
mountains laugh, the dawn ascends,
As if we
had never been born.

VI

Against the paper of the skyThe poplar leaves
are bending;With velvet wings a
butterflyTells of the
summerís ending.

This amphitheatre of woods
Bounded by sky and stream
Is where the councils of the gods
In ancient times were seen.

And still their presence may be felt
In every flower that breathes,
Wherever with a hand of stealth
The breeze moves in the trees.

And yet this world must have an end
And you and I must close
The chapter which enlivened us
And now is comatose.

For silent are the hills and
streamsAnd those who might
understandNo longer live, are
long since gone,Flown far to a
distant land.

They cannot now prognosticate
What gives the brief flower its day,
Or tell what strange skies might indicate,
Or where the blind winds shall stray.

And we are left surrounded
By things that are all unknown,
Wandering, drifting andconfounded,
In a world that is not our own.

Though from the
painting of the sky
Sometimes a thought takes wing
And wrapping itself in mystery
Makes the lone nightingale sing,

Yet that is brief, and the richness
Which once we thought we knew
Turns into fused confusion,
And makes what is untrue true.

So, friends, farewell to
this artfulness,
And the
duplicity of song;
In another
world we will know ourselves
And at last
to ourselves belong.

VII

The last leaves of the autumn
Turn russet and gold and brown;
Sunlight as pale as water
Freckles the patchwork ground.

Now skeletons,
frames and scaffold
Cut traceries in the sky
Where birds find space to linger
Reluctant, unused to fly.

And nature shall be
our mentor
To show how the earth grows cold
As entropy kills off everything
That is not already old.

I will no longer
consider
Wherever my place shall be,
On the slippery streets of cities,
By a loved one, or solitary,

Where thoughts can
thrive, like flowers,
That rise with the morning sun,
To fade with the hot heat of noontide
Thinking their task is done.

And your glance which was like
the sunlightThrough the glass
of a dusty roomLit up the piles
and the lumberAnd shed its warmth
in the tomb.

But I will not be deluded
That these stores are a secret world
Like folded flags in an attic
Waiting at last to be unfurled.

For once more the
Autumn splendours
Which look down from the hills and laugh,
Are gorgeous and abundantly fictive
Like the words of an epitaph.

They will go their way without
meaning,Without sense
without song without sound,Leaving us here but
as empty shadowsStalking the dank
foreign ground.

VIII

As I walked today along the woodland ride
A red camelia wore a shawl of snow
And the dark fir trees had silver eyebrows
And all the ground was blanketed with white.

So I asked myself why are the heavens not red,
Or the snow a different colour, like gold,
Why is green the shade of nature,
But everything is grey in me as I grow old?

Let the blood in my heart warm the ground,
Let my thoughts beat like the wings of many birds
Fluttering upwards, and let love respond
Within me with rainbows of glorious words.

How little we know of the world, for all our wisdom.
The Spring comes, and is halted in despite,
And the heavens care not for our poorrules of thumb
Covering all Springís blossoms with blinding white.

So I shall walk
again looking for other coloursKnowing how little
they mean in the scheme of things,As if in other
worlds, in the minds of others,Purple and gold and
green tune their heartsí strings.

IX

Like the singing of an unstrung
lute, like the soundOf clouds that
pass, or the sun that lights them,Or winds that
gather in the horizonís end,Or everything that
ever in the earth has meaning,I catch the last
breath of a word unspokenA scorpion of the
sand, a plant still hidden,Melodies and
silence, the life unbidden,And all that ever
was born, was brokenLike waves
continuous, or empty sandOn which the wave
breaks, a falling strand,A memory
half-hidden, a time yet to beThe eternal
difference between you and me,
My voice speaks it
by utterance and broken tongue
A language stretched
out, a thought forever wrong.

X

Do you slip away forever, not to be seen,
Like an eclipsed moon, or a shadow that runs
Along a rainy street, or a forgotten tune
At times half heard in the sound of another;

Do you disappear
forever, my heart, my dream,
The one who was always me, yet did not discover
Your loss till you were gone, when I had not held
Your aching hand to mine, did not uncover

Your sorrowís depth
nor what it was to know?
The music begins again, it is silent now,
Not such as you created or made to sing,
It is the hollow reverberation of a broken string.

All that I had of love was buried
in you.I make these words
only but to make sorrow new.

XI

IN A BOOK OF CATULLUSí POEMS

I am Catullus
Who wove the string of a song
In the hot reeking days
Beside the heavy walls of Rome

Or thought of love
and music
Under pine trees by the shores
Of sultry Adriatic seas
My memory dry as bone.

Who will understand meWhen I am goneWhen famished time
my body has eatenAnd swallowed the
language I loved in?

XII

THE SEA

The swelling sea that heaves its chest
And brags and boasts and spits out mist,
An old man that the world forgets
A worn face that the sun has kissed.

The waves roll in
with spendthrift force
Seething with froth and silver edge,
A line of prose, a line of verse,
Line upon line and ledge on ledge.

A thousand years, a
myriad ways,
Longregiments of
infantry
That march and fall upon their face
Brief fragments of eternity.

Or if upon the
populous waves
A dolphin rides, or if a ship
Hangs on its fathomed rugged face
The long brine heaves and sneers its lip.

Could
we but compass with an earThe
everlasting sounds that rain,Dying
and rising, cheer on cheer,A
cry of joy, the dead manís pain,

All
that the mighty world containsWould
be therein, and from that voiceOur
lives for pettiness would ceaseAnd
the white waves would then rejoice.

Freedom that holds immensity,A line of light
where the sun sets,The changing and
unchanging sea,An old man that the
world forgets.